The present invention relates to personal booklets with photographs, and more particularly to personal booklets having a page with a composite image comprising a picture of the bookholder and personal data relating to the bookholder.
Personal booklets such as passports, bankbooks and so forth have a picture of the bookholder's face attached to one of the pages thereof as well as the bookholder's personal data including the name, nationality, date of birth, sex, date of issue, a personal identification number, and so forth to provide the bookholder's identity. The picture is covered by a transparent cover sheet and embossed with a seal in order to prevent the passport's forgery or alteration.
The passports are made through a process of entering the necessary personal data, attaching a picture of the face of the applicant, and covering the attached picture with a transparent cover sheet. This process is laborious and is inefficient in dealing with a large number of passports simultaneously. Consequently, the conventional process of making the passports retards the issuance of the passports.
It has been necessary for applicants to prepare, in addition to a picture of the applicant's face to be attached to the passport, an extra picture of the applicant's face which is attached to an application form when applying for a passport.
In recent years, with the growth of international passengers, machine readable passports (MRPs), in standard form worldwide, can have been experimentally introduced at airports of some countries in an attempt at relieving the confusion of passport control for the entry into, and departure from, a country. The holder's personal data on these MRPs can be read either optically, electrically, or visually by a particular machine.
The process of making the machine readable passport requires, in addition to the above-described steps, another step of providing machine readable personal data on the passport. Due to this additional step, it is slower to make the machine readable passports, hindering the issuance of passports accordingly.